CREDO and OUR Walmart are standing up for workers’ rights

As the largest corporation in the world, Walmart has the resources to pay its all of its employees a living wage and give them access to consistent, full-time hours. Instead, the company reportedly continues to exploit workers, pay its employees poverty wages and fight its workers’ right to organize at every turn.

But dedicated advocates fighting for workers’ rights are pushing back. This August, CREDO was honored to host Andrea Dehlendorf and Tyfani Faulkner of OUR Walmart to talk about the organization’s new app, WorkIt, which helps people working in hourly jobs get answers to questions about workplace policies and rights from trusted and trained peer advisors. They also discussed their work around multiracial organizing and women’s economic stability.

Since 2014, CREDO members have voted to donate more than $150,000 to OUR Walmart, and funding from CREDO helped build their new app, WorkIt. CREDO has been proud to stand with OUR Walmart and Walmart workers in their fight for $15 an hour and full-time, consistent schedules.

In 2016, CREDO teamed up with OUR Walmart to co-sponsor a mobile billboard truck outside its corporate headquarters in Arkansas during a shareholder meeting with a sign reading “Walmart’s CEO earned $9,323/hr last year. Walmart can afford $15/hour and full time.” We also delivered petitions with more than 125,000 signatures by CREDO members in a strong show of solidarity with courageous Walmart workers.

During their visit, Andrea and Tyfani explained how Walmart is defining the low-wage economy and how difficult the company makes life for a typical, underpaid associate: poverty wages, forced open availability schedules with no predictability and little access to full time work, gender pay inequality, and the constant fear of sexual harassment or job loss due to routine illness or childcare issues.

The organization’s new app, WorkIt, is connecting co-workers at hourly wage jobs, including Walmart associates who have historically had a difficult time organizing or talking about workplace issues, on a new platform that allows them to get answers to questions about workplace policies and rights from trusted and trained peer advisors. As Andrea noted, “it’s almost like having a shop steward in your pocket.”

And it’s not only Walmart workers that OUR Walmart is standing up for. As Tyfani put it, “if we can change Walmart, we can change the country. Not only them, but also Target, TJ Maxx and other retailers. We continue to fight not only for ourselves, but for everyone.”

You can watch the entire Facebook Live event below: